Nigel Harvey is the Chief Executive at Recolight, a lamp recycler in the UK. We wanted to know how effective extended producer responsibility programs really are and whether or not they’ve hit a limit on the number of compliant operators. We weigh the pros and cons of enforcement and persuasion when it comes to recycling, and the strategies that come into play on both sides.

Aside from the business of recycling Nigel likes to take moral stands. Online marketplaces are letting some groups sell lamps without buying into the UK’s scheme for ensuring bulbs get disposed of properly; at this point we need to call on laws that force responsibility onto platform holders. Similarly, Nigel has been arrested twice at Extinction Rebellion protests in London, as much as we try to mitigate carbon and build things better, demand is for carbon is only going up – he’s sick of it and felt he needed to make a stand, his morals are trumping his obedience to the law. We also talk politics and the nature of leadership, and the time scales both work at being wrong for the problems we face.

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